29 June, 2013

A group of alumni, highly
established in their careers, got together to visit their old university
professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and
life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with
a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass,
crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to
help themselves to the coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said:

"If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up,
leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want
only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and
stress."

"Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most
cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we
drink."

"What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you
consciously went for the best cups... And then you began eyeing each other's
cups."

"Now consider this: Life is the coffee; the jobs, money and position in
society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the
type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of Life we live.
Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God
has provided us."

God brews the coffee, not the cups... Enjoy your coffee!

"The happiest people don't have the best of everything. They just make the
best of everything."

20 June, 2013

Monkey-hunters in India use a box
with an opening at the top, big enough for the monkey to slide its hand in.
Inside the box are nuts.

The monkey grabs the nuts and now
its hand becomes a fist. The monkey tries to get its hand out but the opening
is big enough for the hand to slide in, but too small for the first to come
out.

Now the monkey has a choice,
either to let go off the nuts and be free forever or hang on to the nuts and
get caught. Guess what it picks every time? You guessed it. He hangs on to the
nuts and gets caught.

We are no different from monkeys.
We all hang on to some nuts that keep us from going forward in life. We keep
rationalizing by saying, "I cannot do this because..." and whatever
comes after "because" are the nuts that we are hanging on to which
are holding us back.

Successful people don't
rationalize. Two things determine if a person will be a success: Reasons and
Results. Reasons don't count while results do!